Roar! Courage: From Fear to Fearless

By Rik Schnabel

Everything that you want from life will come from your courage. Discover a proven courage formula that transforms any fear to fearless.

Rik Schnabel, Australias top Brain Untrainer draws upon his ten years of research on overcoming fear to show you how to be truly courageous.

Learn how to:

? comprehend how fear can make you tired, stressed and unhealthy;

? shift from being fearful to fearless;

? turn addictive traits into advantages; and

? achieve anything you set your mind out to accomplish.

Youll also learn about the seven types of courage, the courage paradox, why you need courage to be wealthy and how passion can dissolve fear.

ROAR! Courage serves as a call to all of us to rise above our limitations, redirect
our addictions and step into the shoes of our leaders and heroes.

While fears will always intrude on your life, you can silence them or you can even use proven techniques to make fear your friend.

Find out how to do it, step-by-step in this though provoking guide to living a more courageous life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jan 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504306188

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Rik Schnabel and Life Beyond Limits Pty Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0617-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0618-8 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/18/2017

Contents

Leaders and Heroes Pay the Second Price

Introduction: Wading into Courageous Waters

Part One

1. Training Your Brain to Roar!

2. Encouraging Families vs. Discouraging Ones

3. The Physiology of Courage

4. The Seven Types of Courage

5. The Courage Paradox

6. Being Average Is Safely Unhappy

7. ROAR! Courage Is a Decision

8. Hiding under the Cloak of the Common

9. When War Language Wanes, Fear Diminishes

10. The Greatest Insights about Fear—Ever

11. The Courage to Be Wealthy

Part Two

12. Why Destructive Addictions Foil Courage

13. Destructive Addictions vs. Productive Addictions

14. From Hooked to Hero!

15. The Power of Eight; Turning Addictions into Assets

16. Two Things That Ensure Success

17. Fear Is Overthinking and Underdoing

18. Why Is Normal Passé?

19. Pandora’s TV Box of Fear

20. How to Create a ROAR! State

21. Is Fear a Pandemic?

22. The ROI of Addictions

23. Education and the Passion Gap

24. Can Passion Dissolve Fear?

25. The Singular Addiction of Billionaires

26. Open the Door of Fear to Find Courage

27. Australia’s $124 Billion Distraction

28. Eight Tried-and-True Ways to Untrain Fear

Closing Thoughts

Free Tickets to see Rik Schnabel Live

Train with Rik Schnabel

About the Author

Courageous Fans

Bibliography

Other books by Rik Schnabel

Reproduction and Communications for Educational Purposes

The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 percent of the pages of this work, whichever is greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes, provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limits (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL license for educational institutions, contact [e-mail].

The information provided in this book is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. This book is not meant to be used, nor should it be used, to diagnose or treat any medical condition. For diagnosis or treatment of any medical problem, consult your own physician. The publisher and author are not responsible for any specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision and are not liable for any damages or negative consequences from any treatment, action, application, or preparation to any person reading or following the information in this book. References are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute endorsement of any websites or other sources. Readers should be aware that the websites listed in this book may change.

There is a thin line between stupidity and courage. That thin line will be determined by time and hindsight. The truth is we never know what courage or stupidity is until we’ve pulled it off. So be sure to keep your head about what you do and use your common sense.

To contact Life Beyond Limits or the author, visit Life Beyond Limits website.

Courage comes from the Latin word cor, meaning heart. I believe courage is being brave enough to follow one’s heart.

Therefore, I would like to dedicate this book to two courageous people who span four generations and followed their hearts: Reginald John Buckland (my daughters’ great-grandfather) and Reginald’s great-grandson Luke Frost.

Reg, as we knew him, was born in 1927 and drew his last breath in 2014. He was eighty-seven.

He was a tall, bold man and courageous enough to take the sort of risks that offer a man a life of freedom to do whatever he chooses. Reg started a number of successful businesses, sold them, and retired at fifty. While he is no longer with us, his legacy of courage lives on.

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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

—Anais Nin

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Recently, I had the good fortune of witnessing Luke’s courage. He was only ten years young when we jumped off a twenty-meter tower at the end of a ropes course. I’ve seen fit adults cringe and wimp out on that twenty-meter platform. That took incredible courage for us both. Later that day, I gave Luke his first surfing lesson, where he faced duck-diving his surfboard into huge waves. ROAR! Courage comes in many forms and gifts us with a life of adventure. I encourage you to find your ROAR! Courage and create those dreams that you so deserve.

If we were really the people we knew ourselves to be, we would be happy. But happy is not a part of our neurological or sociological landscape, so we deny it. We’ve trained ourselves to be subservient, compliant, and to support others; we have learned to squash our own dreams.

Leaders and Heroes Pay the Second Price

Imagine what your life would look like today if you never feared anything—ever. Just think who you would be today if you backed yourself courageously alongside every crazy business idea you had. How would you feel now if you said what you had to say and did what you knew you had to do? This will give you some idea of the power of courage. While we all know that courage is the defining ingredient to living a great life, most of us have little idea of how to bring it into existence. So we have ignored it… until now.

You have found this book for good reason. Perhaps you are wishing to improve your life or your relationships or even create a legacy. Maybe it’s time to take a stand on something or to unleash the real you. For that, I congratulate you, and I’m going to give you everything you need in this book.

I could have stopped writing at chapter 11, though I felt in my heart that if I was to write a complete book about courage, then chapters 12 to 28 were most necessary. At times I’m going to go very deep with you, and trust me, everything I’m sharing with you in this book is for good reason. Please stick with me, and read this cover to cover. Because I want you to live out your dreams, let’s prepare you to do just that.

Because you are reading this, I assume that you have paid the first price—the cover price. You have successfully done what all book buyers do. But is that success enough? If, at some level, you believe that you are a leader in the making, a star that is about to shine, or you are brave enough to become a hero, then know this: these people do more than buy books. They hunt for treasure in books, looking for clues to fast-track their vision or discover their most critical next steps—though the unmissable clue is that leaders, stars, winners, and heroes take unrelenting action on the wisdom and the gold that they mine from their books.

You will quickly discover that I care less about what someone knows than about what someone does.

For this reason, I do not write books for intellectuals, fence-sitters, or nonparticipating judges who can tell you all the things that you are doing wrong, though they themselves have never done it. If you are one of those, then chances are you will not pay the second price.

What is the second price? Let me tell you that money isn’t enough. You will have to earn it. So how do you earn it? You start with the courage to shift your mind-set and expand your comfort zone by taking bold action. That is what it takes to become the leader of your life. I believe it’s worth it.

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Bold ideas favor the brave.

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On a clear night, across an ocean, you can see a candle’s flame ten miles away (sixteen kilometers). A courageous leader with a powerful passion is visible. You will see that person from the other side of the world. That is the reach of courage. Courageous people will traverse dark oceans; wimps will not even get wet. If you are still reading this, my guess is that you have agreed to pay the second price and do what is necessary. You are ready to lead a courageous life, so let’s get started!

Introduction

Wading into Courageous Waters

On the unworn path to success, I have stepped on landmines, skinned my knees, met some precarious types, and, occasionally, I have landed on my butt. There were even times that I thought I was on the path, only to find myself lost in a maze or floating in a sea of sameness. If you are determined and willing to learn, eventually your path to success will illuminate like a beacon. Yet to commence the harrowing journey of the brave, you must be courageous enough to let go of your past, your lifelines, and your habits.

Are you courageous enough to abandon your past? I hope you answered yes! Courage, my friend, is intuitive, yet fear is easy to learn. Fear is a recorded entry in the brain, a historical marker, or a scar on our neural map. It is a by-product of our past mishaps that petrifies into a list of regrets or forms into psychological scar tissue. Fear, however, can be unlearned and removed. In other words, our brains are capable of being untrained of fear, and that is my reason for writing ROAR! Courage. I have had enough of watching people’s fears disable them and vanquish their dreams. How many inventions, visions, and passions die every day, due to fear? There, in the bottom drawers, sit those ideas and bold dreams we once had. It saddened me, yet it motivated me to write this for you.

True courage, therefore, is the ability to abandon our learned fears, to act despite fear, even fears that were experientially installed and neurologically set in our minds at a very young age. Fear’s neurological connections, its axioms, dendrites, and neurons, that form our thinking, live in the most ancient part of our brains and were likely reactivated when we were young. For most of us, this happened in what professor and sociologist Dr. Morris Massey called the imprint period (from birth to seven years). It is the prime reason why we have long forgotten the source of our fears. Our behaviors are conditioned by some unknown feeling or a thought pattern that, for some, seems crazy. That is why, as adults, we often view fear as completely irrational and are befuddled by its hold over us.

Fear even controls the most astute, though few realize how detrimental a program it is. Fear ages us, disturbs us, thwarts us, and interrupts our goals. A set of neurons that fit on the head of a pin bring about a gargantuan Godzilla that destroys our dreams and flattens our futures. We know what to do to create the lives we desire, but ironically, we just don’t take those critical steps that we know. That, my friend, is the invisible monster we call fear. It is a beast that must be tamed; it will become our friend.

For a great deal of my life, success has intrigued me, thankfully somewhat more than fear. I have asked myself often, Why do some people just get on with the task of following their dreams, while the majority flees from it? Others simply ignore their dreams and even resist thinking about them.

Make a friend of fear in three easy steps.

My curiosity has led me to live a very full and fruitful life, particularly as I made a friend of fear. We’re buddies. We are good friends who get each other, but we no longer compete with one another. I know fear is like a two-year-old who is mostly asleep and is startled easily. He is scared of anything new or loud—that is a normal response of a two-year-old. So as fear is my friend, I calm him when he gets scared, and then I reassure him. I see it as a three-step process. First, I recognize that fear has awoken; second, I calm him; and third, I add some logic in a calm voice that a two-year-old can understand. And so fear goes back to sleep. Each time fear wakes up, we calm and educate our fear. There is nothing truer than that biblical saying, The truth will set you free, though in the context of courage, the first challenge is wading through texts of so-called knowledge to discover what is true and what is not.

At seven years old, my greatest transformational asset was a library card. I believed in my heart that one of those books in the library was going to transform my life. Though not one did, they all did, in their unique and insightful ways. Some showed me the wrong way, and in applying their misguided wisdom, I found the truth. Later in my life, authors such as Richard Bach, Dan Millman, Victor Frankl, Louise Hay, Dr. Doreen Virtue, and Dr. Wayne Dyer found their way into my enteric brain through my heart brain and into my head. Each book took me closer to a door that most people call success. Maybe that is why I love books so much. Still today, I am emotively triggered by that magnificent and familiar scent that only freshly printed books can give you.

As a child, while my friends were reading comics, I read psychological literature. I can’t recall if I fully understood their complexities, but I pawed through books such as Dr. Thomas A. Harris’s I’m OK, You’re OK and Virginia Axline’s Dibs in Search of Self. I was always fascinated by the mind and how it worked—and didn’t work. Eventually, I came to understand how we think and that what we think predicates the choices we make and who we become as a result of those choices. In fact, I’m puzzled as to why the psychology of achievement doesn’t fascinate everyone. After all, how we think, what we think, and who we think we are determines the quality of our lives!

My initial curiosity never waned. In my fifty-plus years on earth, I have studied metaphysics, neuro linguistic programming (NLP), life coaching, emotional freedom technique (EFT), reset, hypnosis, mBraining, intuitive healing, and clean language. If that wasn’t enough, I was compelled to study the science of public speaking and training. I even studied transcendental meditation (TM), Buddhism, Christianity, Virginia Satir’s Meta Model, Milton Erickson’s Milton Model, numerology, philosophy, kinesiology, and psychology, among a multitude of other ologies. My insatiable curiosity led me to write this book and enjoy this moment with you.

I believe that curiosity is genius’s apprentice. It led me to discover a path that guides us beyond a friend called fear and who, if unfriended, will protect us from experiencing life itself.

It occurred to me during one of my clinical sessions with a client that the antithesis of fear is not what most assume it to be. Fear’s opposite is not courage. For some it is freedom. When people want fear removed, they don’t want courage; they want what courage delivers. Perhaps for you it’s the freedom to follow your heart and be true to your internal, intuitive compass. So we must come to make a friend of fear and become curious enough about how courage is formed so we can allow courage to join us too.

Curiosity is genius’s apprentice.

To truly make courage our friend, we must meet regularly, as good friends do. To gain freedom or that which we deem as success, we must open the door of courage many times. When courage becomes our buddy, it initiates our ability to dream again—and more so, to do what it is we know in our hearts that we must. After all, it is only by our actions that we transform our daring dreams into deliverables. If we are to create magical lives, we must begin with courageous dreams. For courageous imaginings create the opportunity for courageous lives.

Opportunities start with a courageous promise. That is how most great achievements begin. We start with a promise and do all in our power to deliver it. A courageous promise delivers a level of intensity into our bodies that determines the heights of our thinking and the depths of our activity. As the author of this book, I would like to commence it with a courageous promise to you. Because how we start determines how we finish. So here is my claim…

My Promise to You, the Reader

If you take action on what you learn from this book and make ROAR! Courage a part of your daily practice, you will add enormous value to your career or business, and your life. Opening this book is like opening a new door to an adventurous life, perhaps a life that previously was not forthcoming. My goal is to prove to you that you have what it takes to turn your dreams into an aspirational life—a life worth living. Let me help you to practice what will become known to you as ROAR! Courage, and we will take that first powerful step to realize a dream, to clarify a vision, or to unleash a goal. Walk through that doorway where the magic begins, and prove to yourself and the world, for once and for all, that you can achieve anything to which you are committed.

That is my claim. What is yours?

To make this book the most valuable book you will ever own, create in your imagination, right now, the greatest or grandest goal you could ever imagine for yourself. All great lives are created; they are made up. Make up your mind today.

You could do four things right now that would be highly advantageous and help you to accept my claim. My question is, are your goals and dreams worth taking a risk? Are you worth it? If the answer is yes—and I hope it is—then it is time to dive into the pool of ROAR! Courage by agreeing to and completing the following:

Today, [insert date], I, [insert your name], agree to live a life of value and take the first step to realize my dreams, and so I will

1. agree to practice ROAR! Courage until it becomes my default state of mind;

2. read every page of ROAR! Courage so I know how to fire off my courage program;

3. choose any one desire, dream, or goal and write it below; and

4. commit to taking the very first step that will put me on the path to realizing my courageous desire, dream, or goal. I know I will practice ROAR! Courage by taking the very first step, which is [write the first step].

(Writing the first step is a must!)

What you just did above (well, I hope you did), I did back in 2002, and that one courageous step completely shifted my life, 180 degrees. It led me to write my first book, The Secrets of Creating a Life Beyond Limits. I wrote it to help those who were willing to learn what I did to magically transform my life. It helped my readers expand their thinking and so their lives. Here is what a couple of readers said about it:

At first, you expanded my paradigm of what is possible. Then you shifted my thinking and helped me to double my income!

—Vladimir Platil (sales executive)

After reading your book, I noticed how, uncannily, I now seem to be in the right place at the right time.

—Sandy Ewing (principal, Life Coaching Melbourne)

The Secrets of Creating a Life Beyond Limits explored a quantum idea that I discovered and termed infinity belief. The idea drew from the psychological, metaphysical, and spiritual sciences of attainment. It still changes people’s lives today, and I just love hearing from readers about their magical experiences. I learned how to earn more money than I ever did at any time in my life. I even earned more than Australia’s then-prime minister, John Howard. Recently, I put the whole program online, and you can get some free insights via www.RichMind.com.au.

That led me to the next part of my life. So in my second book, The Power of Beliefs—7 Beliefs That Will Change Your Life, I decided to help my readers understand not only why the world is like it is today, but more so, why their world is as it is. I wanted my readers to recognize how their beliefs determined the very thinking that influenced their lives. In my view, there wasn’t a definitive book about beliefs on the market, and after thousands of hours of coaching and training, I observed common patterns of success and failure. I just had to share my insights; that is where the 7 Beliefs That Will Change Your Life originated.

ROAR! Courage—From Fear to Fearless is my most necessary third book. It complements my first two and interrogates an invaluable ingredient to your success—courage. I will give you insights into what courage really is and how to initiate it. In my view, too many people have courage all wrong. This misconception has people queuing at an invisible line, one that is only visible to the uninformed. We do not attain courage before taking a courageous step. I have redefined courage as ROAR! Courage, and you will learn more about my reasons further into the book.

I also like the ambiguity of ROAR! as the homophone raw because courage is acting without skill, uncooked, unfinished, unrefined.

I believe that the insights I will share with you provide a recipe for courage. You will enjoy previously unpublished discernments about courage in chapter 10 (The Greatest Insight about Fear—Ever) and advance your thinking as you learn how to turn your thinking around in chapter 28 (Eight Tried-and-True Ways to Untrain Fear). If you want to add riches to your life, you will love chapter 25 (The Singular Addictions of Billionaires). You will discover the one common ingredient of success that I believe has been totally missed by the masses: the recipe for courage

My hope for this book is that by reading it, more people will realize how we get things done and how we succeed. ROAR! Courage will make sense to you and will make being courageous easier. Courage is my natural state; you may discover that it is about to become yours.

Part One

1

Training Your Brain to Roar!

Last Friday I went surfing with a shark. No, not intentionally. Thankfully, I wasn’t close enough to see its teeth, but by the size of its dorsal fin, my guess is it was a biggie. A fellow surfer spotted its dorsal fin while a small group of us were sitting on our surfboards in the lineup, about 437 yards (400 meters) offshore, behind the breakers.

A shark’s dorsal fin is triangular with a straighter trailing edge; it’s distinctly different from the curved dolphin’s fin. I have surfed with lots of dolphins and a few sharks (that I know of), so I know how to tell the difference—unless they are coming straight at me.

While our clique of surfers all knew that a shark was only fifty-five yards or so from us, not one of us, surprisingly, got out of the water. I thought I would be scared—I really did—but I wasn’t. I had to ask myself if my reaction was courage or stupidity. Many would say it was stupidity, and part of me cannot disagree, but another part of me knows we are scared of too much in this world, and it is time to stop this fear pandemic.

The next day I went surfing again but this time alone. After paddling the first hundred yards from shore, I noticed a strange shadow in the water. It startled me, but it was nothing. That morning there were many nothings. I saw dark shadows everywhere! The water where I usually surf is a clear sapphire color, and no matter where I looked, I kept seeing dark shadows and immediately felt a sense of paranoia. These are the tricks generated from a fearful mind. We can be fearful of our own flatulence and startled by our shadows.

Have we become scared of our own shadows?

We can train our brains to be brave or fearful. So how does fear contaminate our thinking? The physiology of fear, such as a shock response to a shark, writes code in our neurology. Fear forms patterns in our psyches that we unconsciously follow. They become behaviors that are initiated via a stimulus and cause a chain reaction. The result is a release of chemicals that causes our hearts to race, our breathing to be faster and shallower, our muscles to tighten, and our voices to sound shrill at high frequency, immediately broadcasting a warning to everyone within earshot. All of this is formed in our neurology as a memory. Memories are how we store fear. Once we learn a fear, we have memorized the sensory triggers that fire off our unconscious mechanisms that have us jumping like a cat on a hot tin roof. If you have seen the movie Jaws, you know the music used to trigger that the shark is coming. That music engages a powerful set of neural fear triggers. Still today, Jaws is responsible for people’s irrational fear of sharks. Even in Michigan, beach populations plummeted in the years after Jaws. The state attempted to educate people